The DSA's Blind Spot: Algorithmic Audit of Advertising and Minor Profiling on TikTok

2026-03-05

AI Summary

This study addresses a regulatory gap in the EU Digital Services Act (DSA) Article 28(2), which prohibits profiling-based advertising targeting minors but adopts a narrow definition of “advertising” that excludes undisclosed influencer marketing. Through an algorithmic audit on TikTok, the authors deployed simulated minor and adult accounts, combined with automated content annotation and statistical analysis, to empirically demonstrate that—despite nominal compliance—minors are exposed to substantial volumes of undisclosed commercial content driven by high-intensity interest-based profiling. The intensity of such profiling reaches five to eight times that of formal advertisements shown to adults. The findings underscore the need to broaden the legal definition of “advertising” to encompass emerging forms of commercial content, thereby closing critical enforcement loopholes in digital platform regulation.

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Misinformation & Fake News
• Machine Learning: Privacy
• Search and Optimization: Algorithm Configuration

Application Category

• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Web data quality in the era of algorithmically-generated content
• Responsible Web: Algorithmic accountability and transparency on the web
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: User modeling for targeted and personalized online advertising

Abstract

Adolescents spend an increasing amount of their time in digital environments where their still-developing cognitive capacities leave them unable to recognize or resist commercial persuasion. Article 28(2) of the Digital Service Act (DSA) responds to this vulnerability by prohibiting profiling-based advertising to minors. However, the regulation's narrow definition of"advertisement"excludes current advertising practices including influencer marketing and promotional content that serve functionally equivalent commercial purposes. We provide the first empirical evidence of how this definitional gap operates in practice through an algorithmic audit of TikTok. Our approach deploys sock-puppet accounts simulating a pair of minor and adult users with distinct interest profiles. The content recommended to these users is automatically annotated, enabling systematic statistical analysis across four video categories: containing formal, disclosed, undisclosed and none advertisement; as well as advertisement topical relevance to user's interest. Our findings reveal a stark regulatory paradox. TikTok demonstrates formal compliance with Article 28(2) by shielding minors from profiled formal advertisements, yet both disclosed and undisclosed ads exhibit significant profiling aligned with user interests (5-8 times stronger than for adult formal advertising). The strongest profiling emerges within undisclosed commercial content, where brands/creators fail to label promotional content/paid partnership and the platform neither corrects this omission nor prevents its personalized delivery to minors. We argue that protecting minors requires expanding the regulatory definition of advertisement to encompass brand/influencer marketing and extending the Article 28(2) prohibition accordingly, ensuring that commercial content cannot circumvent protections merely by operating outside formal advertising channels.

Problem

• Digital Services Act
• minor profiling
• advertising regulation
• TikTok
• influencer marketing

Innovation

• algorithmic audit
• minor profiling
• advertising regulation
• TikTok
• Digital Services Act